“Crank it up,” said the old mechanic.
The propeller spun slowly as the starter motor strained to turn several thousand pounds of steel. A puff of black smoke suddenly belched from the cowling.
“Come on, you SOB!” screamed Ridley, willing the engine to life.
The engine coughed black smoke, backfired, and then caught with a vengeance.
Lyon let it warm up for a minute and then nudged the throttle forward, bringing the big radial motor up to high idle speed. Paulson and his raiders raised their fists in the air and shouted in delight.
CHAPTER 53
“We’re going to rope up right here,” Jack said.
“Even I can get up that puny slope,” Leah said.
Jack dropped his fifty-pound expedition pack to the ground. “I want ropes and crampons, right here.” He removed a set of telescoping poles out of his gear pack that, when fully extended, resembled a set of downhill ski poles.
“You’re not using your ice axe?” Marko pointed toward Jack’s axe, still secured to the rear of his gear pack.
“I’m going to probe for crevasses as we ascend the slope.”
“What happens if we fall?”
“You’d better be able to arrest yourself, or we’ll all be eaten up by a crevasse in what will be an unhappy conclusion to this climb.”
“We’re not a couple of your clients,” Leah said, a sparkle in her eye. “I don’t think we need the ‘you’re on the edge of death’ speech.”
After climbing several hundred meters, Jack’s crevasse pole broke through soft snow, and a narrow strip of darkness appeared.
“Jump over and don’t waste time looking down,” Jack instructed. “This isn’t much of a crevasse; but it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the climb.” He dropped his pack and pulled out another coil of climbing line. “I want more rope between the three of us.” He pointed at Marko, who held the anchor position. “If Leah and I go in, you’ve got to get the head of your axe jammed into the ice. You’ll only have a few seconds to get us anchored. Do you understand?”
Marko nodded.
Jack drew in a deep breath after climbing another 300 meters. Even to his high-altitude-trained lungs, the air felt thin. He turned to admire the view without saying anything.
In every direction, rocky peaks jutted through crystal-white glacier. A continuous range of mountains, not the infinite fields of snow and ice he’d imagined it’d look like before making his first trip onto the ice. The sky was a deep shade of blue with wispy clouds cutting across the sky like a series of razor-sharp knives. In the distance, he could plainly make out the Las Tortugas, the burned hulk of the Russian transport, the small dots representing the Russian base camp, and the Caribou sitting quiet, a stark contrast to the earsplitting rumble he associated with the Caribou while flying to Thor’s Hammer.
While sound could travel long distances over the ice, it always seemed quiet in Antarctica, as if the ice itself were different down here. It could smother sound; during a storm, when visibility dropped to near zero, you couldn’t hear someone screaming your name from ten feet away.
The air always tasted odd, as well. After a couple of trips to Antarctica, he’d realized that was because the continent was void of everything familiar, an almost sterile environment.
“What’s on your mind, Climber?” Leah was grinning. She knew what he was thinking and just how sappy it would sound if he tried to express it in words.
He pointed out at the horizon and said, “How much bullshit we deal with every day, instead of taking time to look at beauty like this.”
Leah admired the view. “I have to hand it to you, when it comes to scenery, you know how to pick it.”
A throaty roar in the distance broke the moment. It echoed off the granite walls and shook the entire valley.
“If you want evidence of your cliff dwellers, you’d better get a move on,” Jack said.
Leah shaded her eyes. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s the Las Tortugas, breathing fire again. I If I know Paulson, the bomber will be ready to fly long before we get tired of this view.”
Jack took five steps forward, and suddenly the ice fractured with an audible crack. Before he could shout a warning, Jack disappeared into the blackness.
CHAPTER 54
Ridley trotted toward the front of the Las Tortugas and signaled Paulson with the classic hand-under-the-throat motion to shut the engine down. The billionaire climbed out of the cockpit and met his mechanic under the engine cowling while Lyon turned off the aircraft’s electrical systems.
“What’s the prognosis?” Paulson asked.
Ridley nodded toward the warm liquid dripping down onto the ice. “These engines are leaking oil like a sieve.”
Paulson bent over and dipped his fingertips into the viscous brown liquid. “Can you repair them?”
Ridley shook his head. “Don’t know. Could be they weren’t rebuilt properly. We might nursemaid them to Punta Arenas, but then again they might burn up a hundred miles out to sea. In that case, we’re headed for a cold swim.”
Garrett walked over and examined the oil dripping down on to ice. “They stripped the battery out of the tractor. We haven’t found it yet.”
Paulson swore under his breath. “Christ, what else can go wrong?” He spun around and shaded his eyes. “I sure as hell hope Jack is having better luck than we are.”
CHAPTER 55
Marko slammed his axe into the ice, burying the tip nearly four inches deep. He watched helplessly as the rope snapped tight, pulling Leah over onto her stomach and dragging her toward the gaping black hole. The young climber gritted his teeth, leaned on the axe, and held tight.
The force of several hundred pounds slamming against his harness knocked his breath away. He prayed the tip of the hardened steel axe would hold. If it didn’t, they were all in for a ride toward the bottom.
Marko’s ice axe held the weight for several seconds, then pulled out of the ice with such ferocity the axe was torn from his hands. Marko felt himself being yanked away with Leah toward the crevasse.
When Leah had been pulled off her feet, she’d repeatedly slammed the axe down on the frozen surface, desperately trying to get a bite. Each time the axe simply bounced off the rock-hard surface, showering her with an explosion of ice crystals.
While Marko’s axe held them out of the crevasse, she’d swung at the ice once more, hard. Miraculously, the tip sunk several inches into the ice and held, even after Marko’s axe slipped, leaving her mere feet from the crevasse.
Marko, sensing the reprieve, had slammed his axe into the ice and then began digging furiously into his pack.
She lay on top of the axe, her arms shaking with the strain. It wouldn’t be long before the ice axe popped out of the ice and she was pulled into the crevasse.
“I can’t hold the axe much longer,” she yelled.
“Few seconds,” Marko replied calmly.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m sinking an ice screw. It should be enough to anchor the line.”
“This harness feels like it’s cutting me in half!”
“Almost got it.” Marko clipped a carabineer into a knot loop in the line and secured it to the ice screw. “You’re going to slide forward a little,” he said. “Don’t worry. It’s just the ice screw taking up the slack.”
“Come on, Marko—”
Marko pounded the tip of another screw into the ice and spun it down. He secured a line and freed Leah. She rolled away from the line, breathing heavily.